The NFV architecture offers a way to design and deploy telecommunication network functions. In the past, these functions have been tightly coupled to the proprietary hardware on which they execute. NFV decouples the software implementation of these functions from the underlying infrastructure. The software typically runs in virtual machines or containers, under the control of a hypervisor or operating system which run on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. This approach has the promise of significant reductions in capital and operational expenses for service providers as custom hardware is no longer required and scaling is provided through additional software deployments, not a provisioning of new physical equipment.
The European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) network functions virtualization (NFV) industry specification group (ISG) has defined a reference NFV architecture. However, the details of many important aspects of the functionality are not described or specified.